Willy Wonka and Trick Daddy Know Where It's At

The beautiful world of candy and confections, a place in which your blood sugar soars and your belt is binding, but a smile forever remains. This magical place is so alluring that The Archies, Baby Bash, Trick Daddy, Sammy Davis Jr., and 50 Cent have found inspiration to deliver lasting lyrics and memorable melodies,"I'll take you to the candy shop, I'll let you lick the lollipop".... truly compelling. 


This week in Candyland wonderful things went down. 

• CHOCOLATE CHOCOLATE CHOCOLATE. We played with $564 worth of chocolate in 3 days. Boom. We created truffles, chocolates, transfer sheets, spheres, rods, hearts, eggs, pods, and so on and so forth. Our creativity was tested when we were set free to practice the newly acquired techniques in preparation for our chocolate showpiece final this upcoming week. We painted with cocoa butter, carved, and free handed delicate shapes, and miraculously I came home with MINIMAL chocolate embellishing my whites!

DELICIOUS Disaronno cordials

Peter making those tasty cordials

My chocolate spheres prior to being assembled

A little chocolate contraption

Filled Chocolates!!! Caramel, Gianduja, flavored fondant.

Creepy Chocolate Hand

• Made Gianduja, chocolate nut paste, like Nutella! mmmmm 
• In lecture this week, we were assigned to do a short project over a particular confection and then present it to the class. My assigned confection was salt water taffy, an Eastern seaboard treat that originated in the late 1800's, mmmmm, I prefer Laffy Taffy myself, "A joke on every wrapper", how can you possibly resist? 
• SUGAR!!!! Following our presentation's we started creating some fabulous treats. We spilt into teams to experience the different cooking stages of sugar: Simple Syrup, thread, feather, soft ball, firm ball, hard ball, soft crack, hard crack, and caramelization. Chef Adrian named us "Team F" and was throughly entertained by his joke, seeing a British man of small stature giggle exceedingly is incredibly entertaining. Each of us created a sugary treat. Taffy, nougat, chocolate nougat, lollipops, gelees, buttercrunch, sponge candy, brittle, fudge x2, turtles, and red hots. I made Taffy, which is quite a work-out, with the help of my fantastic assistant Peter, the process became increasingly entertaining. He oiled a dough hook and held it as I wrapped and pulled the taffy, "I'm just an oiled-up hooker", oh Pete!

My "Oiled up hooker"

TAFFY!!!

Our Candy Shop

• We tried to grow rock candy through a supersaturated sugar solution and in doing so we learned the harmful effects of agitation and contamination in the crystallization of sugar. The results were huge chunks of sugar residing in mason jars. meh.

Rock Candy before the contamination

• I received an awkward wenis massage from Chef Adrian. 

Chef Adrian trying Pop Rocks for the first time

• I realized that I have an incredibly literal mind and I am not capable of drawing abstract structures. When given the task of drawing an abstract showpiece following the theme of rotation, the only things I could come up with were geometric shapes trying to form a tornado or a ferris wheel? Yeah, that's what happens when you take math as an elective rather than art, bahhhh.
• Mid-term reviews, ooooooh. It went pretty well. I think. 

With my current class schedule it is nearly impossible to do any extra-cirricular activities. My days consist of rising early and leaving my house at 6:30am and returning home around 8:00 pm, it doesn't leave too much time for additional adventures. The weekends  currently consist of scrambling about trying to prevent frostbite, do laundry, work on homework, and contact internship sites, I am hoping to have a go with my first site this week. So so so excited, I REALLY want this site as my first full-time employer! I'll keep you updated on that journey as it unfolds!

Peter as Chef Adrian

Now I am off to prepare for a busy busy week of work, finals, and a visit to see my Friend!!!